§ Lord Morris of Manchesterasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they still expect Parliament to have to wait until 2003 for the outcome of the study at the 166WA Government's science and technology research centre at Porton Down of the possible adverse effects of the multiple vaccination programme to which British troops deployed to liberate Kuwait were subjected in 1990. [HL5404]
§ Lord BachThe Ministry of Defence's Vaccines Interactions Research Programme is studying whether the combination of vaccines and tablets used to protect UK personnel during the Gulf conflict can give rise to adverse health effects. The results of the initial dose-ranging study were published in theJournal of Applied Toxicology on 21 January 2001. The study did not report any remarkable findings with the combination of vaccines and pyridostigmine bromide pretreatment examined but helped to determine the appropriate vaccine doses for use in the subsequent study. The present study is using a small primate, the marmoset. The first two phases of the marmoset study found that the dose and panel of vaccines used in the dose-ranging study did not give rise to acute health consequences in the marmoset.
An outline of the findings was presented at the Conference on Illnesses among Gulf War Veterans: A decade of scientific research in Washington DC in January 2001. Interim results from the third phase of the marmoset study will be submitted for presentation as a scientific poster to an appropriate conference later this year. This will report upon the effects of vaccines and pyridostigmine three months after administration. The majority of the practical work from the third phase of the marmoset study should be complete by August 2003. The study as a whole is expected to complete in December 2003 and cannot be speeded up because of the need to monitor the marmosets over a pre-determined period of time and to undertake key activities such as histopathology and statistical analyses. The final results will be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The timing of publication will be a matter for the journals' editors.
The MoD hopes that results from related vaccines research work in mice being undertaken at the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control will be available in the form of an abstract of work submitted for presentation at a conference in September 2002. The poster describing the marmoset work and the abstract of the mouse study will be available on the MoD's website (along with the published information to date) at: www.mod.uk/issues/gulfwar. High quality research cannot be hurried or skimped to meet any earlier deadline than we envisage.